Plenty for Boks to work on

Schalk Burger of South Africa during the Rugby Match between South Africa v World XV at Newlands Stadium, Cape Town, 11 July 2015 ©Chris Ricco/BackpagePix

Schalk Burger of South Africa during the Rugby Match between South Africa v World XV at Newlands Stadium, Cape Town, 11 July 2015 ©Chris Ricco/BackpagePix

Published Jul 13, 2015

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Cape Town – The Springboks can read “absolutely nothing” into their Rugby Championship prospects based on Saturday’s seven-try romp over the World XV at Newlands.

These were the words of Robbie Deans, who coached the exhibition side to a 46-10 loss in South Africa’s season-opener.

The former All Blacks fullback is no hater of SA rugby, though. Last week he affirmed his affinity for the game in this country and labelled the Boks as leading contenders to win the World Cup later this year.

Instead, Deans’ opinion is rooted in the experience of a 19-year coaching career, during which he headed up the Wallabies between 2008 and 2013. He consequently had no difficulty separating the quality of the challenge presented to South Africa by a ‘fun fair’ team assembled for commercial purposes, and one that will be defending national pride while mobilising for World Cup duty.

Like Deans, Heyneke Meyer saw through the mist from the fireworks of a high-scoring victory.

“All in all, I’m very happy, but we need to improve next week, because it’ll be a much bigger challenge,” said the Bok coach.

Spectators will celebrate Willie le Roux scoring a hat-trick of tries, one of which was created by an incisive counter-attack by flyhalf Handré Pollard, but the shortcomings of both players in key areas did not escape Meyer.

“I thought our kicking game all over wasn’t good enough,” he said. “We want to win the ball back when we kick ... some bad habits crept in, just kicking for the sake of it.”

At times it looked like Le Roux was hoofing a deflated ball, so poor was the range and accuracy of several relieving kicks.

Fortunately, the visitors were not adequately organised to launch effective counter-strikes, and the Boks’ superiority in the physical exchanges allowed them to slow the ball down long enough for the defensive line to set.

Meanwhile, Pollard, pictured, left nine points on the field through three missed conversions and one skewed penalty.

“Luckily Pat Lambie came through (with two successful conversions) in the second half,” added Meyer. “You have to kick every single goal; that’s what we expect going into the World Cup, and we’ll have to improve there.

“Pollard probably didn’t get his balance right, but he’s a superb player and he’ll have to fix it for next week.”

Bryan Habana was also not satisfied with a performance that he knows won’t be good enough to beat Australia in Brisbane this Saturday when the Boks start their Rugby Championship campaign.

“As a team, we really pride ourselves on not being happy with a performance like we had today,” he said. “There are a lot of areas in the game that we have to look at and sort out before we come up against a strong Australian side.

“Firstly, our decision-making – there were many times (in attack) where we needed to set up one more phase. There’s lots to work on in our kicking game, and our team discipline started to slip in the second half.”

Meyer will attempt to address these issues during both of the team’s full training sessions this week, but a more difficult problem to solve is the absence of industrious runners Duane Vermeulen and Willem Alberts to long-term injury.

“We saw tonight how much the Boks missed the big ball-carriers to get over the gain-line,” said 85-Test lock Bakkies Botha. - The Star

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